Police say number of complaints down

AuGRES — The AuGres Rock n’ Roll Weekend’s cruise and car show had fewer cars than in other years, but the Cruisers Car Club in AuGres still considers this year’s event to be a success.

“Considering we had rain in the morning on Saturday and forecasted rain on Sunday, I think we did real well,” said AuGres Cruisers Car Club member Dick Hill. “For the cruise we had 262 cars show up. … For the show, we had 170.”

In other years, the cruise had lined up over 400 cars, but even with the quicker cruise through AuGres, city administration says it’s pleased with Rock n’ Roll Weekend.

“I think it was a very successful weekend,” said AuGres City Manager Pat Killingbeck. “We had huge crowds.”

She said businesses in the city seemed to get plenty of traffic during the weekend.

“They (local businesses) all seemed to be busy,” Killingbeck said.

One issue that organizers were looking to control this year was burnouts during the cruise. According to Hill, the cruise was had noticeably less burnouts, which he says is a safety issue.

“It (cruise) was much more controlled this year,” he said. “Thanks to the AuGres-Sims Police Department and the sheriff’s department, everything went great.”

“The cruisers came to me and said ‘The burnouts are getting to be too much at the parade,’” said AuGres-Sims Police Chief Jason Overstreet. “Sheriff Mosciski offered to lend us as many officers as we needed to help with the cruise.”

Overstreet also says burnouts in front of the large crowds watching the parade of classic cars are dangerous because of how close spectators are to the cars.

“On Michigan Avenue, there’s the roads and then there’s the yards. There’s no buffer zones,” he said. He added when doing a burnout, if a driver loses control, which isn’t unheard of, it would be hazardous to those viewing the cruise.

Mosciski says to help ensure safety the Arenac County Sheriff’s Office provided four additional offices to man the cruise route.

However, some drivers in the cruise still decided to let ‘em rip.

“We had a couple of them, but we took care of them right away,” Mosciski said. “There was two citations wrote. They (drivers) were warned ahead of time not to do this.”

Overstreet also says the nightlife and events following the cruise were more controlled this year.

“This is the 14th one (Rock n’ Roll Weekend) I’ve worked and this is the best one I’ve ever had,” he said, adding there were some complaints from campers at the AuGres City Campground about cars being revved up late Saturday night, but even calls on issues such as that were down this year.

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